Power in Weakness

The disciples waited ten days after Jesus ascended to heaven until the Spirit was poured out upon them at Pentecost. Saturday night, ten months after I started to experience the ominous symptoms of Lyme Disease, I experienced a Pentecost of my own. I spent the afternoon again at the conference sessions, this time with Daniel by my side. This time both of us struggled to pay attention, which made me feel a bit better about the previous afternoon. At one point I felt a vibration next to my thigh, signifying a new text message on my phone. It began, "This is the most boring sermon I have ever heard..." It was from Daniel. He was sitting next to me. I looked up at him and we both started quietly cracking up. That night I returned to the awakening service by myself. My symptoms had again intensified through the afternoon, and I arrived with pain in different parts in my body, a feeling of mental sluggishness, and just flat out fatigue. I struggled to find God in any way fo...

Friday was the first day of IHOP’s Israel Mandate Conference. As I noted earlier, I picked this week to travel to Kansas City merely because of my personal schedule, but it soon seemed that the timing of it was sovereignly orchestrated. I continued to anticipate what God might have for me. I was not disappointed the first session. I rested in the morning, then went by myself to listen to Dan Juster speak on “Israel and the Church” in the afternoon (Daniel was working with Lou Engle, his supervisor). To be blunt, Dan Juster is a pretty boring speaker. But he has incredible insight into the Bible and God’s purposes and heart for Israel. I tried to pay attention, but between the mental fogginess of this illness and the monotone nature of his speech, it was a hard task. Towards the end, though, he made a statement that temporarily lifted me up out of the haze and caught my attention: “We cannot comprehend the suffering that Israel has gone through.” The concept stuck in m...

Technically the fourth day of the trip started at midnight on Tuesday, and that is where my last blog left off. Daniel and I left the service and hurried to the car, trying to avoid as much of the sudden downpour as possible. He asked what had been going on with me for the past hour, and we began a conversation that lasted until 2:30 am. So much for catching up on some of the sleep I had lost. But I'd do it again if I had the chance. Daniel told me what he saw God doing in my life in the midst of this season. It was so insightful that, at one point, I remember wishing I was recording it. It reminded me of some of the talks I have had with June Ainley. He called this a "season of faith and endurance." He said that it was okay that I couldn't do all the things that I wanted to do, because God was teaching me something that would stick with me for the rest of my life - how to stand in simple faith when everything is falling apart around me, even my own body. He went on t...

Day 3 of my trip to the heartland of America. Day 1 in my actual destination: Grandview in Kansas City, Missouri. Because of the tornado ordeal, I finally went to bed at about 2:30 am that night. Daniel had picked me up at the airport, and we shared a happy hug and then fellowship on the way back to his house. About four hours into my sleep on the couch in the living room, I heard a small boyish voice ask, "Is Mr. Glenn here?" In truth, I was exhausted and annoyed, but its hard to stay that way for long around Samuel Katz, Daniel's two year old son. I did, however, manage to slip another two hours of frequently interrupted sleep into the morning. Upon finally awaking, I gave Samuel a "morning hug" and enjoyed a feast of a breakfast with the Katz family. Most of the afternoon was spent resting. Feeling more symptomatic than usual because of the previous day's events and a lack of sleep, I tried to concentrate long enough just to read a few chapters of the Bib...

So after noting my thoughts on the "peace that surpasses understanding" that I was experiencing, we made a quick layover in Denver for an hour, boarded the plane again...and then heard sirens going off. "Exit the plane as quickly as possible," we heard a voice over the loud speaker say - "there's a tornado coming." Now, I am a California boy, born and raised, and I don't know anything about tornadoes. I don't know if these sirens are a big deal or not. But the hurried pace of the other passengers and the cutting noise of the sirens themselves didn't cause me to imagine best case scenarios. My already erratic heartbeat shot up to a machine gun pace, and I filed out of the aircraft as obediently and quickly as possible, trying desperately to keep my cool. Hey, what happened to that "canopy of grace" that I was peacefully flying over a few minutes ago without a care in the world? With visuals of being stuck in Denver for days and sle...

I'm sitting in the second seat from the window on a plane on my way to Kansas City. As long as the woman next to me doesn't get the awkward idea that I am staring at her, I can look past her head and see the scenery outside. For the most part, clouds are the only thing visible as far as the eye can see. Every now and then the curtains of the misty white expanse will recede for just a moment and reveal a cross section of an earth-colored mountain range. I presume we are flying above Colorado right now, or at least near to it. I feel surprisingly peaceful. More than a week ago I was already enlisting friends and relatives to pray specifically for my time in the airplane. I've flown all over the country numerous times, and to Asia three times (one in which I flew back home to CA by myself), but since the onset of the symptoms of Lyme Disease last summer I've been experiencing heightened levels of anxiety and even panic attacks that have since made me leary of traveling lon...

Tonight I drove 3 hours from Visalia to Santa Monica to stay at my brother's house. After a short traveling reprieve and hopefully a good night's rest, tomorrow I will take a plane from LAX to one of the Mecca's of the worldwide prayer movement: the International House of Prayer in Kansas City. A friend of a friend is paying my way so I can receive prayer for healing. But this trip is about more than honoring the spiritual groundwork that has been laid at this ministry. I am on a search - a very personal quest. I picked this week because it fit into my schedule. But after the tickets were already purchased I noticed some funny things about the timing of this trip. A little more than 7 years ago I drove to Kansas City with a youth group from Visalia and came back a completely different person. I saw Jesus that week, and my life has never been the same since. Now, I return to my own personal Bethel of divine encounter with a thought to pour fresh oil upon the pillar of my mee...